They Don't Know

A Grime Primer

Grime is the UK's rap (not rap), syncopated urban music with people rhyming over top. Like Jamaican dancehall, there's an obvious kinship with U.S. hip-hop, but once you start drawing parallels they collapse pretty quickly. Grime is its own culture, with its own codes and laws, slang and dress, sonics and style. But it's also the most accessible (to an international audience) music urban Britain has produced in the last decade. Chopped into song form, steamrolled by MCs, it's been severed for most people from its roots in hardcore, jungle, and UK garage.

If anything has survived East London's 21st Century Year Zero, it's the mode of delivery, dubplates, and pirate radio. The history of grime is subterranean. Even as one aspect of the scene peaks, the seeds of its demise are being sown on the pirates and on plate. At street level, maps become useless pretty quickly. Dates are nearly impossible to pin down, as something that blew up the scene on dub may not get a proper release until a year later, if at all. Add to that the reticence of artists to pin down their own personal history, and you have a genre that's a mess of contradictions. And that's before you even get to the music.

The following is a rather barebones primer, songs that brought the scene to where it stands today (though not necessarily tomorrow). Neatly breaking things down is pretty much antithetical to the way the post-rave pirate radio network works. On some level, you need to "be there" to understand the whole experience. Once a pirate radio session is broadcast, it's gone forever (unless you taped it). But, as I am guessing a lot of people reading this haven't had much experience with grime aside from media hype, any port in the storm, right? I have tried to go light on the history of stuff that predates grime. Nothing kills excitement deader than some old guy telling you why this old stuff was "important."

One note for U.S. readers: Grime would not exist without UK garage, despite the media's attempt to brand it as a hip-hop analogue that sprang up overnight. By the turn of the millennium, school kids and sullen-eyed hoodrats were chasing the original champagne-sipping Sunday steppers back to the safety of funky house. UKG's relatively chilled 135 bpm roll was irresistible to all those fast chatting b-boys who had to content themselves with rave as a substitute for rap. From 2000 onward, the story of grime was the MC shouldering the DJ out of the spotlight. If the landscape looks wholly different in 2005 from 2000, it's arguably more a demographic shift than a sonic one (though it's all chicken/egg.)

The following makes no attempt to be a definitive history of the genre. Being American (to say nothing of white and middle class), I can only go by what I have read/heard: On the sleeves of records, in magazines like RWD and Deuce, from fellow fans, online radio, and on blogs. But with the (very) modest American splash made by Dizzee Rascal and the release on Vice of Run the Road, here's a brief introduction for the curious American to (not to put too fine a point on it) the most exciting music being made on the planet right now.

So Solid Crew: "Dilemma" (1999/2000) As early as 1999, UKG crews like So Solid had formed, dropping full verses that went beyond the crowd hyping that defined the rave/jungle/UKG MC. In the summer of 2000, two So Solid affiliated records pretty well tipped the whole scene on its ass, the Crew's "Dilemma" and Oxide & Neutrino's "Bound 4 Da Reload." The three-note bass throb of "Dilemma" was arguably one of the first "dark" UKG tracks. It absolutely killed that year's Notting Hill Carnival (imagine a cross between Mardi Gras and Freaknik with giant soundsystems and fewer fratboys). If UKG had been almost obnoxiously busy at times, the bare rimshot claps and ribcage rattling bass of "Dilemma" were a suspect device planted to clear out the dancefloor. Most crucially: It sounded really good being rapped over.

"Bound 4 Da Reload" did one better by going all the way to number one in the pop charts. The class-conscious end of the scene recoiled in horror ("a kid who got lucky with his first track," sniffled Zed Bias), and the rift had opened. So Solid became pop stars, shifting a now unthinkable 500K of their debut album. They were banned from clubs; ignited a media frenzy over garage violence; got in dust-ups with the law; reputedly stabbed Dizzee Rascal; released a handful of great pop songs like "21 Seconds"; and disappeared as quickly as they appeared, victims of a shrinking UKG market and the temerity of their pop crossover.

Musical Mob: "Pulse X" (2002) "Dilemma" was still notionally "funky," in a listless sort of way. "Pulse X"-- a crudely pressed (it always sounds like it has cat fur trapped in the grooves) instrumental single-- is the dividing line between grime and not grime. For nearly two years, this record was the scene, as hundreds of teenagers using cracked Fruity Loops tried to copy its boing-clap-clap beat. (For every step forward, there were a dozen "Pulse X" rips.) The style was called 8-bar, because the beat (or bassline) switched up every eight bars. It made for some seriously funny "dance" music but the perfect backing for MCs. Garage raves were now ciphers in all but name. "Pulse X" was never widely anthologized because suddenly the UKG market all but vanished. (Besides, you could hear it on the radio six times an hour.) The Mob started talking about making "musical grime" despite destroying garage with their thrilling anti-musicality. Producer Youngstar (Dizzee's "Stand Up Tall") split, taking most of the brains with him. But they'll always have "Pulse X".

Wiley: "Eskimo" (2002) Wiley is grime's bedrock, lord of Roll Deep manor, bad bwoy producer extraordinaire, and not a bad MC. He's one of the few people with roots in UKG to occupy a key seat in grime. As one of Pay As U Go Kartel, he was instrumental (no pun intended) in pushing "garage rap" in a more aggro, less-flossy direction after So Solid. PAUG's "Know We" still stands hair straight up tall, with its body-blow beats and that keening violin hook that winds through to the music Wiley and the PAUG's DJ Target produce today. And it's debatable whether the world would have known about Dylan Mills without Wiley Kat's stewardship.

"Eskimo" is the ur-Wiley production; though he's evolved, he may have yet to best it. The key ingredient was the Wiley Bass Sound, which I have described for years as someone blowing over the top of a plastic Pepsi bottle. Except massive, cold, and alien, like Miami's downtown drag on a Saturday night transported to Pluto. The beats were chunky and yet thin, a one-fingered child told to replicate dancehall. But all that mattered was that bass, instantly entering the post-rave pantheon palette of Awesome Noises Guaranteed to Fire Up a Crowd. Wiley demolished the tyranny of 8-bar and "Pulse X" but it would still be a while before anyone was brave enough to follow him down the rabbit hole.

Jon E Cash/Black Ops: "Sublow Pressure" (2002) Black Ops are unrepentant misogynists who aren't even clever about it. One of their biggest early hits was "Swolla", an, uh, entreaty to the ladies that's about as joyful as you'd imagine. (Though nothing can quite capture the full horror of the purely ugly way the chorus leers "swolllllleerr.") And they insist on pushing this "sub-low" tag, even beyond Wiley's attempts at the equally silly "eski." But it's undeniable that Cash has produced some tunes that ooze a greasy menace. "War" is stomping 4X4 garage putting potholes in your yard and making off with your lawn jockey. "Westside" is like swerving across the yellow lines in a tank, manned by a snatch of Donald Sutherland's ultra-gangsta monologue from JFK. But "Sublow Pressure" was their statement of intent. The whinnying low-end and pony ride gunshot drums make me vaguely queasy. I'd try to describe it further but all the metaphors I can think of are scatalogical.

Wonder: "What?" (2003) A bubbling, boiling marsh of bass-- you know Wonder's "What?" best as the backing for Dizzee's "Respect". A few eerie synth flushes, and then it oooozes-- like Legionnaire's Disease through a motel vent. One of those tunes everyone wanted to bust their biggest bars on. Fucking voodoo magic.

Wiley: "Ice Rink" (2003) "Ice Rink" is the sound of the Neptunes door-slam beat ("Grindin", "Southern Hospitality") hardened into a thin plastic shell. It doesn't groove at all, just relentlessly pummels you with its hollow BANG at the end of each bar followed by a series of hiccuping bass hits. It's probably the most "avant-garde" grime tune yet, and it forces MCs to attack like it's a linebacker. Sharkie Major sounds like he's gulping for air after each slam, and Escobar just loses the plot entirely, all but shouting the beat down. Guaranteed to stop any DJ set in its tracks.

Kano: "Boys Luv Girls (Vice Versa)" (2003) Jammer and N.A.S.T.Y. (Natural Artistic Sounds Touching You...almost as goofy as Jason Atkins Represents Universal Love Exists) were, along with Roll Deep and Wiley, the biggest thing in grime in 2003. Jammer's productions favored right-angled dancehall drums, whizz-bang industrial noises, 8-bit bass, and "eastern" sounds like sitars, tablas, and wailing Bollywood broads in flimsy saris. He also had a big thing for glockenspiels. (There can never be enough glockenspiels.) Tracks like "Take Them Out" were chop-sockey epics of doomy mid-range bass riffs and punchy drums, everything a stab-- including the MC'ing. Kano was obviously their breakout star (and has been for an eternity now), but it's weird to think we called this "pop." Aside from a 50p synth-woodwind melody, it's all robo-bass-and-clockwork-drums. The reason it's pop, if it is, is Kano, stealing every line from himself. "Okay, it's a date then! (I ain't payin!)"

Danny Weed and Target: "Hyperdrive" / "Fresh Air" (2003) A sureshot double A-side, "Hyperdrive" / "Fresh Air" is a springheeled snapshot of 2003's eastern fetish. Roll Deep's Danny Weed is one of grime's most disarming rhythm programmers; his beats are as likely to be built from cash register pings or Polaroid flashes as the sounds of a drum kit. He and conjoined twin DJ Target mesh these onomatopoeic percussion bits with irregular leadfooted kick drums all weaving around an absent pulse. They color in the empty spaces with gorgeous-but-spare chimes, sitars, and tablas. A headwrecking mini-symphony of syncopation.

Big E-D [ft. DEE]: "Frontline" (2003) If anyone in N.A.S.T.Y. was going to give Kano a run for his money in the smack-you-upside-the-head star power stakes, it was D Double E. That prehistoric bird noise he makes (which everyone seems to have agreed is spelled "mui mui" for some reason) is one of grime's great audio tattoos, and he's got this amazing, mulchy, slurred flow that sounds like the words are spilling out a hole in the side of his mouth in great messy glops. (Plus he dances like a mummy trying to do the robot.) "Frontline" is sluggish, swampy, foggy gunk, marshaled into riffs, drowning the spirit. "16 bars/ Hot like tar/ Never go away/ Permanent scar."

Durrty Doogz: "Hold Me Down (No No No)" (2003) Produced by Brit-rap interloper Fusion, this sounded slicker than your average, which suits high-stepping fake Yardie chatter Doogz just fine. Originally part of Roll Deep, Doogz went solo fairly quickly and has since renamed himself "Durty Goodz" (woof!). Dig where that heart-stopper quasi-junglist snare goes start-stop-start-stop and Doogz rides it like John Travolta on a mechanical bull.

Jammer: "Destruction" (2003) The original mix of "Destruction" snips the awkward spybeat horns Jammer appended to the "VIP Mix" on Run the Road. All that's left are the rictus-tense strings playing against a bassline that's more of a cyborg belch at the end of each bar. (For a while in mid-2003 there seemed to be a whole sub-genre of tunes devoted to dairy curdling strings and icky Bernard Hermann ambiance.) I have no idea if the six-minute MC version I have is available commercially (ah, the joys of random mp3 acquisition), but-- despite containing some of the same MCs busting the exact bars they do on the RTT version-- it needs to be heard. Missing is an absolutely crucial verse from Sharkie Major who stampedes in before Kano even gets his last syllable out, the closest I've heard in grime to a "pirate session on record."

Ruff Sqwad: "Anna" (2004) Ruff Sqwad's producers Rapid and Dirty Danger are keeping the loosen-your-belt banquet vibe of hardcore (though they're much more darkcore) alive, not afraid to get all lugubrious and mournful one minute, goggle-eyed silly the next. "Anna" is a disco ball made of anthracite, flashing ugly southern bounce "horn" fanfares, crackling noise, mid-range blare, a rain of hysterical bleeps, swirling synths, and manic "strings." Ruff Sqwad's MCs (they have their adherents, apparently) always sound like they're trying to claw their way out of the depths of their own productions. The whole thing seethes, "weird energy" for real.

Donae'o: "People Don't Know" (2004) This is a jittery gypsy jig from Danny Weed. Donae'o is a born performer, with a repetoire of silly voices and not a bad singing voice. He blew up in 2003 with "Bounce", a Miami bass-ic stormer (which got even more Uncle Luke-like in it's "Miami Bass remix") (naturally). Though many hate them, I am quite charmed by the ultra-stoopidity of stuff like "Farmer Yardie" ("my name's Farmer Yardie/ And I like to party"), though his soul stuff makes me scrunch up my brow in displeasure. (More Redd Foxx, less Jamie Foxx plz.) Grime has a real weakness for self-help tracks (Wiley's "Pick Yourself Up", Riko's "Chosen One"), but "People Don't Know" may be one of its first social commentary songs, albeit a rather milky one. "See the house that she was livin' in/ Well it wasn't too appropriate/ To cut a long story short/ They took her kids away/ Oh what a shame!" I dunno, the kids might appreciate it in the long run!

SLK [ft. Wonderkid]: "Hype Hype" (2004) The more-than-welcome return of Sticky, who's produced more bumbaclaat tunes than I have fingers to count them. His soca-influenced triplets and baroque, wobbly basslines tore up the dances in 2001 and 2002, with a conveyor belt of often near-identical instrumentals that were redeemed by his pitch-perfect ear for MCs. His Social Circles was one of the few proper UKG labels to soldier on in the dry spell between "Pulse X" and new school labels like Terror Danjah's Aftershock and Davinchie's Paperchase. Despite his roots in darkcore jungle pioneers Top Buzz, his notoriety was cemented with "Booo!", a collaboration with a then unknown Ms. Dynamite, inarguably the tune of 2001. "Shott the Weed", a collaboration with the Surgery over a grinding cut-up of Tone Loc's "Wild Thing", was his last hit until the storming "Hype Hype". Sticky's beats still feel closer to darkside UKG than grime, but as more producers start passing mash notes back to dance music, the lines are getting pretty blurry.

Sadie [ft. Kano]: "So Sure" (2004) Paralleling "bubblecrunk" (Ciara, et al), producers like Terra Danjah have been slowly swirling back in sweet R&B vocals that grime originally chucked in the dustbin for its journey from the light. In 2003, this mostly took the form of ugly, pop-art cut-ups, femme vox thrown at odd angles against grime's typically stiff, anti-naturalistic drum programming. 2004 was the year the full vocal returned to grime. (Some people, perhaps realizing "grime" might not be the best name for twinkly pretty stuff, have been throwing around the awkward R&G...that's Rhythm & Grime, obviously. Tim Finney's "grimette" is better, but still not right for chicks who want to be Beyonce instead of a smurf.) "So Sure" pulses with heavenly white light, smeared seesawing riffs like headlights speeding by in the night. A hundred thousand fireflies.

Trim [ft. D Double, Wiley, Riko, and Footsie]: "Boogieman" (2004) Like many producers, Terra Danjah has a little sonic signature at the beginning of a track to let you know who's responsible. Except instead of a guy going "Just Blaze!" or what have you, it's...a laughing baby gremlin. Which fits here for once, as the former Taliban Trim (!) skulks like Jack Skellington on the Goosebumps bounce of "Boogieman." Voices from the lunatic fringe hiccup from around corners, as the bass and strings move in time like formation dancing goblins. Pure silliness with a hardened center.

Bruza: "Get Me" (2004) Bruza has one of the great flows, the cockney Cookie Monster from the east. He rocks the Ludacris sing-song with the timbre of David Banner after diction lessons. His trademark "Get Me" is weirdly (unintentionally?) reminiscent of Timmy's "Timmy!" on South Park. The beat is tumbling tablas, deep timpani-like booms, and a four-part bleep. Aftershock always keeps it pretty swinging, if not fonky.

Essentials: "Headquarters" (2004) I am including this despite never having heard it in full. You know something's good when the intro alone makes you clammy and nervous. Essentials are the Sergeant and you are Private Pyle. This is the type of tune that exists pretty much solely to be dropped on pirate radio, a call and response between sampled voice on record and live voice in studio. "State your name, solider" the voice barks. If you don't shout your own name back, you're dead below the neck. (If you don't then bust into a giggle, you might be wearing a tracksuit.) "Headquarters" almost wins the award for capturing the feeling of 2004 best, as MCs like Demon and Bruza kept racheting up the intensity levels, making like MOP in one of those sleeveless Union Jack t-shirts Joe Elliot rocked, everyone SEEMING to be SHOUTING like THIS. Except we still have one tune to go...

Lethal B: "Pow (Forward)" (2004) More Fire Crew had one of the earliest (and still biggest) grime chart hits in 2002 with "Oi!", a head-fucking garble of ugly scraping snare sounds, "Sleng Teng" bassline, and cockney-meet-yardie Micro Machine dude madness. Again, you couldn't really dance to it, but you could bounce bounce bounce bounce. They released and underrated album (check the primo Dizzee collaboration "Still The Same") and then disappeared back to the safety of the pirates.

De facto leader Lethal B started Lethal Bizzle Records in 2004, and promptly proceeded to tip the scene in a way that hadn't been done since "Pulse X". According to urban myth, "Pow (Forward)" was banned in Essex clubs for getting all the council estate moshers too hyped up for comfort. It destroyed the Notting Hill Carnival (always the best bellwether of where urban London is at), as DJ's rewound after only a few bars when beads of sweat the size of fists flew off the crowds pained foreheads. Onrushing 808 claps-- like a Red Bull'd "Diwali"-- bore through solid rock, chip diamonds, punch craters into sidewalks. Every MC sounds as if their bones are about to burst from their skin.

Apparently, as we go to press, U.S. MC Pitbull is prepping a commercial release for his version of "Pow (Forward)". Even if it disappears overnight, it will almost certainly be the biggest direct impact UK urban music has made in the U.S. in the last decade. (Craig David excepted.) By the time it's released, grime will already be elsewhere. Maybe not even "grime" anymore. The pirates don't sleep, and neither should you.

This piece is indebted to Tim Finney, Simon Reynolds, Simon Hampton, and Matt Ingram-- the original grime blogging crew-- for info, support, tunes, and inspiration.